A quiet notice V2Melody closes at midnight on , Spanish time.

Closes

A note from Richard

V2Melody will close at midnight on 20 January 2028

This site has been a retirement project in musical poetry: poems chosen with care and set to music, offered freely for as long as it felt right to keep the garden open.

The work no longer holds the place it once did in my life. I have gone as far with it as I wish to go. Like a sand mandala, it was made to be completed and then released. I am not attached to its permanence, and I do not believe any of it needs to last beyond the time it was given. The poems were already here before I arrived and began to experiment with them. They will still be here when these musical experiments, and indeed myself, have been swept away, like the sand of a mandala. Nothing has been lost.

I want a simpler end to my life, days of simple love and enjoyment with my wonderful wife of 20 years. The work of maintaining a server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit that life.

From 4 November 2026 I will not be adding new poems or musical poems to the site.

The experimental music I am making now is on my Suno profile. Those pieces stay there, and are not added to this site.

Until midnight on 20 January 2028, Spanish time, everything remains available exactly as it is. That is when my VPS server contract comes to an end, and it will not be renewed. After that, the server will be switched off and the site will disappear.

The Mandala Is Finished explains this more fully.

Thank you to anyone who found a poem, a track, or a quiet moment here.

The pleasure was in the making.

Richard

Home › Glossary › Letter H

Hame

Dialect
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

Home; one of the most emotionally resonant words in the Scots vocabulary.

Detailed Definition
"Hame" is perhaps the most charged of all Scots words, carrying the full weight of belonging, exile, longing, and return. It appears in countless songs and poems as the object of desire for those far from Scotland, and it represents not merely a physical dwelling but an entire cultural and emotional world. Burns, Stevenson, and generations of emigrant Scots poets have invested "hame" with profound feeling, making it a one-word poem in itself, capable of evoking home and all its meanings in a single syllable.
Example
Example in poetry:
"Hame" means home; Burns writes "There's nae place like hame" and uses "hame" throughout; A poet might write: "Hame is the word the heart returns to / when all the restless years are through." for a homecoming poem; "She kent that hame was not a place / but the light in a familiar face." redefines home emotionally; "The road tae hame is sometimes lang — / but every step is worth a sang." encourages perseverance; "He built his hame on shifting sand — / and lost it tae a stranger's hand." introduces loss; "Hame is where the stories start — / the first and last address of the heart." closes with lyric definition; "Come hame, come hame, the hill calls clear — / the heather blooms and all is here." uses direct address for an emotional return
Additional Notes
Hame is one of the most emotionally loaded words in Scots, carrying in its single syllable the entire weight of belonging, exile, and return. It differs from English "home" not only phonetically but in its cultural freight: in a country marked by emigration, displacement, and diaspora, "hame" resonates with longing in a way that the standard form cannot quite replicate. From Robert Fergusson's "Auld Reekie" to contemporary poetry of the Scottish diaspora, "hame" is the destination of desire and the measure of loss. Students should treat it as a cultural keyword rather than a mere dialect form — its appearance in a poem almost always signals that questions of belonging and identity are at stake.
Also Known As
Home At home
Skip to main content